Mr. Berryman, it's your ship to sail now

If one is looking for the good news out of the University of New Mexico men’s basketball program Thursday morning, try this:

The New Mexico Lobos’ 82-74 loss to Colorado State at the Pit, their fourth defeat in their last eight games with three of those losses coming at home, would seem to greatly reduce the likelihood of UNM coach Eric Olen getting hired away after just one season.

That, at least, would be good news for Ryan Berryman — hired on Wednesday as UNM’s athletic director. With football coach Jason Eck safely past the postseason hiring frenzy and secured for this coming fall, Berryman can breathe a little.

But not much.

What if the Lobos turn right around and win at Utah State on Saturday, earning the top seed in the Mountain West Conference tournament? What if they go on to win the tournament?

What if the Lobos don’t win at Utah State but still go on to win the conference tournament? What if the Lobos make a run in the NCAA Tournament, and suddenly Olen looks a lot like he did at the end of January, when his team was 18-4 overall and 9-2 in the Mountain West?

Fortunately for Berryman, he had the best seat in the house as Fernando Lovo, his friend, boss and predecessor, lost a football coach (Bronco Mendenhall) in his second week on the job and a men’s basketball coach (Richard Pitino) 3 1/2 months later.

Lovo didn’t quite turn water into wine, but came close. Call it sangria.

Eck, hired by Lovo 11 days after Mendenhall bolted for Utah State, coached UNM to a 9-4 record and a bowl bid — oh, and a 33-14 pasting of Mendenhall and his Aggies.

Olen, hired by Lovo just a few days after Pitino left for Xavier, has his Lobos, despite their recent slide, sitting at 22-8, 13-6 and in a secomd-place tie in the Mountain West entering Saturday’s regular-season finale at Utah State.

All that is why Lovo is now the athletic director at Colorado.

Yet, Lovo has not been Berryman’s only mentor when it comes to hiring coaches.

Yes, for Eddie Nunez, Danny Gonzales (football) didn’t work out. But Pitino did. So has Darren Gauson (track/cross country), in a big way.

Tod Brown (baseball) has been solid. Nicole Orgeron (softball), in her fourth year heading a program that in the past has devoured coaches like so much mashed potatoes, is 10-9 so far this season.

Berryman has worked for Nunez and Lovo. What he’s learned from them, no doubt, is part of why he was hired.

Now, as a former basketball player for East Mountain High School and a former UNM director of basketball operations, can he give Olen some suggestions on how to right this semi-listing ship?

That ship was outright sinking for the first 30 minutes of Wednesday’s game.

At UNM’s defensive end, Colorado State was dissecting the Lobos as if they were that frog we all worked on in 10th-grade biology — but with far more skill.

Colorado State big men Kyle Jorgensen and Rashaan Mbemba combined to hit 8-of-12 3-pointers, perhaps aware that Boise State big man Drew Fielder was 5-of-10 from 3 when the Broncos beat the Lobos 91-90 at the Pit on Feb. 7. That’s got to stop.

When the Lobos weren’t giving up open 3-pointers, they were getting tortured by backcuts or giving up uncontested layups in the paint.

At the offensive end, the Lobos struggled to get good shots and missed most of the ones they got.

New Mexico, down 17 points with 10 minutes left, fought back to within four points on a Deyton Albury 3-pointer with 38 seconds left. But it was too late.

Olen blamed himself and the game plan he’d installed for a rematch against a team UNM had beaten 80-70 on the Rams’ home court Jan. 6 — a game Jorgensen and Mbemba both missed due to injury.

“I didn’t set our guys up for success tonight,” Olen said.

Albury, after scoring 22 points and shooting 8-of-9 from the field while wearing dark glasses to protect an eye that had been scratched during UNM’s victory over San Diego State last Saturday, said Wednesday’s loss wasn’t on the coach.

First of all, Albury said in his lilting Bahamian accent, give the other guy credit. The Rams, after all, have won eight games in a row after starting the conference  season 3-8.

“Colorado State’s a great team,” he said. “… I know they’re not a team you can sleep on.”

Question, then, for Olen and for Berryman, with CSU leaving the Mountain West: do you really want to schedule the Rams non-conference, as has been discussed?

That, though, is a question for the long term.

In the short term, Utah State, a team that beat the Lobos by 20 points in the Pit in the game that started the current slump, awaits.